fuf_998's comments

>a problem with a system

Short recap: Vavilov was prosecuted for political opposition, not science. Two arguements for this: 1 - read his sentence and biography; 2 - genetics of that day was not an alternative and did not get a more sufficient evidence than agrobiology, that is the real explanation of genetic research being put aside (but never stopped).

>the way science is supposed to be done

There was a lot of good thinking done last century about how you can not disentangle science and ideology or other cultural biases, starting from defining science. Science is a tool, not a goal. So you can say > It is a problem with a system that looks towards <private gain/God's love/progress for whole humanity/etc>, says what science fits that best, and embeds it into society

and it works everytime. Unless you've got an ideology based on science? That's what historical materialism attempted by the way.

Could you please give any info on "intentionally rigged evidence"? It is generally viewed as a problem of reproducibility in science. I am working on the topic and this is particularly important. It seems very hard to have a solid proof of any fraud except diary notes, confessions of others.

Don't you see any room for a scientific development whatsoever? Or every dogma or fork from a current dogma is accepted normally immediately as it emerges? No, rather let's look into political perspective on this, because we are talking about SU after all.

Class enemy is defined in socio-economic terms rather than purely social (which are even hard to define). Responding to your irony on "virtue" - there are certain pre-defined aspects of one's economic activity on others, for example if you are living off by owning private property and interest from this - your interested are naturally against the interest of people you are dealing with. This simple concept seems very hard to comprehend.

Thanks for your comment, i'm working on heterochromatin formation rn as a phd (not claiming full understanding of full epigenetic field ofc, but have some conceptual touch).

>Lysenko claimed to do things well beyond anything current studies of epigenetics would allow

You are right, but this is not true for all of his work; look at his earlier works on seed vernalization by heat treatment - he experimentally did what is mechanisticaly described now [0]. Isn't it funny - instead of tweaking crazy plant genome with complicated patented GM tech with minimal improvement as a result, you can dip your seeds in warm water and change the phenotype competely. Worth revisiting?

Btw, both your and my comments fairly can go to Vavilov too and his less-known sides of research. But for myth sustaining purposes - Lysenko is totally bad, Vavilov is totally good, thus communism (or whatever "bad" label is tranding rn in capitalism criticism) is anti-science.

>they preferred Lamarckism instead of Darwinism for purely ideological reasons

I've tried here to add this scientific debate dimension to this preference, which is omitted. Both theories were in their nappies back then, and one (Lamarckism) was more appealing bcs of its alignment with ideology, right. It does not mean that genetics were evidently true back then and SU denied it for ideology' sake - this is how is read in the OP writing.

[0] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ppl.13163

> as a gang of crooks who belonged somehow to some kind of international conspiracy

this is exactly what is being done now, but in the opposite direction. When this should be viewed as a purely normal scientific process of debate.

>All these school manuals were extremely ridiculous

Did you try to read any other schol manuals in different countries? School education is well-known to be a source of pure objectivity and true enlightment for an individual in its core.

He was. Only he was imprisoned for political reasons of being anti-bolshevik, you can even read this in the quote from his sentence in this cold-warish piece of writing in OP. This is biggest scientific myth i know - that soviets/marxism/etc deny science, because they prosecuted Vavilov for it. Like genetics back then was as it is now (search eugenics), and scientific debate about nature vs nurture was settled, and Lysenko was just some boy and didn't get applause in NYC conference on agrobiology. But I'm glad at least in research frontiers people do revisit Lysenko legacy nowadays, in the the light of epigenetic research. For common people it's just another neccesary illusion.